RE: Mips SOC, Linux

["Mitchell, Earl" <earlm@mips.com>]

> But let's also look at the options you have right now:
> 
>  o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.
>    Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.
>  o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some 
> the Linksys
>    WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.
>  o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree 
> (working in cleaing
>    the patches) would be another reasonably priced option.  
> Generally you
>    may want to look at the list of platforms supported by
>    http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have 
> friendly price tags.
>    Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a 
> bit quirky to
>    use.
>  o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on 
> the order of
>    $100.  I have not idea this is true or still true for the 
> new owner of
>    Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.
>  o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space 
> Qemu is a
>    really nice and well performing system which also is 
> rapidly improving.
> 
>   Ralf

Another possible option are the Roku HD series boxes. 
The old Roku HD's (also known as Photobridge) used a
MIPS-based chip and Roku provided linux SDK for developers to download
(see http://www.rokulabs.com/community_developers_sb.php). 

That box is no longer sold.  However it appears they now have a new box
called the Brightsign HD600 http://www.rokulabs.com/digital_brightsign.php
which sells for $300. The manual says it uses a Nexperia chip. They
may eventually provide a linux SDK for this box also.  

-earlm